RSS: Why my best friend should be yours too...

OK, my guess is that if you're anything like me, you're inundated with information.  All the time.  If you spend even 2 hours in front a computer each day, the amount of information available to you is astounding.

If you've one particular field of interest (in my case, music and the music industry) you may have come across 10, 15 or 20 blogs/websites that really pack a whallop on the information side.  It's life lessons, great tips, good people with good writing thinking big and generally getting your juices flowing.    Problem is, they're always updating, always adding new analysis.  You could just bookmark each page, I suppose, and systematically check each one each time you log on...but wouldn't it be easier if new stories, information and music just came to you?  You see where I'm going here...

RSS (Rich Site Summary, or more commonly Really Simple Syndication) does just that...It delivers the webpages you want right to your desktop.  Almost every news page or blog has an RSS feed, with most of them making it nice & obvious with a big orange button (like the one I put on this blog post).  To receive an RSS feed, you’ll need what’s called an aggregator, or feed reader.  Most of these are free and very simple to install.  Here are some of my faves:

Google Reader:  They’ve taken their time and thought this one through.  It offers almost everything you can want in a reader, including the ability to search for content you’d like to add by keyword.

Sage:  The best way, IMHO, to get RSS feeds.  It’s one of Firefox’s extensions and sits dutifully by while you browse the internet and will even search for feeds on a page you’re visiting.

Bloglines:  An interesting take on traditional readers, with a bit of social networking thrown in so you can check out what other users are finding interesting.

After you’ve installed a reader, it’s simply a matter of finding content.  I started with just news feeds (BBC, the SF Chronicle) but I’m now sitting on around 50 music blogs which simultaneously helps me find new music, talk about it and find out who’s thinking what about how music will be delivered to the listening public in the future.  It’s quite enlightening!  Just right click on the RSS feed button on the respective sites, select “Copy Link Location” or equivalent and paste the URL into your reader using the “Subscribe” button.  It’s also important to note that when you “Subscribe”, you’re not paying for anything…just standing up and saying “I’d like to hear more of what you’ve got to say”.

These are the obvious advantages from a viewer’s perspective, but as a content provider myself, RSS is even more valuable.  It provides a direct link between me and prospective customers, critics and anyone who might want to venture an opinion on Penny Distribution’s coming and goings.  As both a reader and provider, aside from email, there’s really been nothing else that’s changed my experience of the internet as completely and as positively as RSS. 

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, PD’s RSS feed is coming very soon…